Our No-Plastics Year: Lessons Learned (and a Little Manifesto)

The Unavoidable and the Avoidable


Our No Plastics Year has come to an end, and it's time to reflect on the larger lessons drawn from the experiment. The past months have helped Rick and me see clearly the role of plastic in our ordinary lives. Every day, because we've been paying attention, we are faced with the fact that every material aspect of our daily existence is inextricably bound up in plastic. Even when we do not directly generate plastic waste, we rely indirectly on plastic-dependent products and industrial processes even to go about the simplest tasks. There is no way around it. But the experiment has helped us sort out the avoidable from the unavoidable.

I remember a few years ago our friend Pam committed to a period of living as a locavore – buying and consuming only food grown within a hundred-mile radius of home – to reduce the carbon footprint of her food consumption. She made many discoveries along the way that had not been at all obvious to her as a member of the general grocery-shopping public. For example, she learned that that while Oregon is a major cranberry producer, it is essentially impossible to buy Oregon-grown cranberries in the state. She also discovered that reading product labels was not sufficient: labels show where an item is processed, but not where its ingredients are grown. Experiments like these open our eyes to economic and infrastructural workings that are often invisible to us as consumers.

As I write – in a rustic wooden cabin in a forest setting – I am using a computer made partially of plastic, connected to a power source with a plastic chord, taking notes with a plastic pen in a notebook with a plastic spiral. I got here – and everything I'm using got here – in a car with plastic components, made in a factory that surely has many plastic components itself. I'm keeping off the chill with a fleece shirt; fleece is made of plastic. My shoes, my cell phone, my contact lenses and the saline solution they require – plastic is all around me, and this is just what I can see from where I sit. It is clear that we can live mindfully, but we cannot extricate ourselves from the modern world altogether and live a pre-plastic existence.

And in some ways it is a wondrous invention – so pliable and so versatile that its applications are almost without limit. It also occurs to me that in some instances, plastic may be a“greener” option than the alternatives. For example, plastic is much lighter than glass, so plastic food containers require less fuel to transport than glass ones. (My suggestion: eat locally!) And the jury still seems to be out on the disposable vs. cloth diaper debate: durable diapers go through an awful lot of water. (My suggestion: Don't have babies! Okay, touchy subject. I had a baby. I was even a baby myself once. Hey, some of my best friends are babies. Maybe a better bit of advice is “Have fewer babies.”) Plastic even has life-saving applications. I doubt any of us would want to return to the era of medicine that predated the invention of synthetic polymers.

At the same time, I see how wantonly, how frivolously, how thoughtlessly we use the stuff. There is no reason for every restaurant beverage to be served with a straw, for apples to be sold in clam shell containers, for fleeting squares of paper to be laminated. Single-use plastics, which comprise the biggest source of plastic pollution, are especially aggravating. Shopping bags, plastic utensils, straws, cups and lids, polystyrene takeout containers, and water bottles are all convenience items we can live perfectly well without. The damage they deliver is staggering compared to the tiny and transient moments of handiness they offer us.

The Damage Done

What is that damage? The question has been addressed exhaustively elsewhere, and I do not wish to publish a research paper here. I will just mention three big, obvious reasons that plastic is a problem.

• Ocean health. By now most people have heard of the Great Pacific Gyre, one of five gargantuan vortices in the world's oceans that have sucked in thousands of square miles of plastic trash, dispersed and continuously photodegrading (breaking down into smaller and smaller particles of plastic) so that there is no easy way to clean it up. These and other collections of trash are killing marine life at an alarming rate. And of course, these plastics can make their way up the food chain, threatening us as well as all the other life they encounter.
  
  
• Landfill space. Plastic is probably safer in the ground than above it. But landfill space is of course not unlimited nor impermeable. Plastics can poison water tables when city dumps leach contaminants. And when space is short, many plastics end up being shipped to third-world countries and burned for fuel – an air-polluting process that poisons many communities and harms other living things.
  
  
• Human health. Of course, the health of the land, water and air around us affects human health. Plastic is also entering our bloodstreams more directly from the products we use. Ubiquitous plastics such as phthalates leach from containers into our drinking water and food. Phthalates are powerful endocrine system disruptors, implicated in such health problems as miscarriage, obesity, Type II diabetes, numerous cancers and genital malformation.
  
  
  It seems reasonable to suppose that the research results are only starting to show up. We will likely learn more and more about the dreadful havoc that these chemicals can wreak. And the longer we go on living with the stuff, the greater and more awful its impact will be.

The Way Forward

In a summit meeting of two in September, it didn't take long for Rick and me to decide to keep on keepin' on with our low-plastic living. We don't have the stomach to return to pre-experiment consumption habits. Of course, household objects and personal electronics will wear out and need to be replaced. We will continue to travel. Plastics will wile their way into our lives because we cannot find alternatives and are unwilling to live without certain technologies and conveniences. But we are living, and intend to keep living, without a steady stream of the stuff coming in. (We did decide to abandon the cloth diapers – too hard on the washing machine – and have returned to paper – but to rolls wrapped in paper, not plastic.) The easiest place to shun plastic is in the grocery store, where we shop almost exclusively in the produce aisle and meat department: everything is bulk, taken from the store in paper or re-used bags from home. Other consumer goods, like clothes, we try to find second-hand before we consider buying them new. 

Rick and I have been trying to live in a low-impact way in part because it's simply the right thing to do, whether or not our efforts have a measurable impact. In this sense, our endeavor to live with little plastic is almost a spiritual practice. It has to do with wanting to keep a clear conscience, with living out a commitment to doing as little damage to the environment as we know how. Beyond a small pile of trash we didn't make, and a little peace of mind we did, what good came of the experiment? Writing and speaking about it – publicizing it – has been an important component of our no-plastics year. (This will be my last blog entry on the subject, but we've been invited to speak publicly on how we live, and will probably continue to accept speaking invitations for some time.) We are contributing to a stream of voices from around the country and around the world calling attention to the problem of plastic. The blog has inspired a couple people to try to carry out plastic-free living of their own, and inspired quite a few more to examine their own habits and cut back on their plastic consumption where they can. The amount of plastic discards these friends and acquaintances actually avoid may be immaterial. What is more important is the shift in thinking that comes with mindful consumption, because only when a critical mass of us begins to demand alternatives will our political leaders pay attention.

Our society uses plastic as though it were harmless, when in fact it has a very grave and irreversible impact on both human health and the health of the greater environment on which we all depend. We would like to see society reserve plastics for truly important functions, and stop putting it to silly uses. When, where, what and how it should and should not be used is a local, and national, and international dialogue we citizens need to be having. And after the dialogue – regulation. 

Here's the kicker: humanity needs to start using plastic in a fiercely discriminating way. But this discrimination will not be achieved one household at a time. The accumulated plastic Rick and I have avoided this past year – a truckload, perhaps – is absurdly negligible compared to the monstrous amount our nation (and other nations) generates. The two of us can't make a dent in that mountain. The efforts of everyone who cares about this issue can't make a dent in that mountain. The dent can only be made at the level of policy and of law. It can only be made by governments, and our most important work, as environmentalists, is to command the attention of our governments, and induce them to act on behalf of the highest good.